If there's one type of blog post I don't really enjoy reading, it is the post that dwells on the task of blogging itself. As if personal blogging in and of itself isn't narcissistic enough, blogging about blogging certainly is. You put yourself out there on a blog, write on a regular basis, get some response. You bookmark the blogtracking website, and you begin to get interested in your blogging stats. Perhaps you even begin to time your writing and posting so that it hits the readers when they're likely to be online, rather than on Saturday night.

But then, for whatever reason, the blogging slows down, and aware that there might be 40, 50 or even a few hundred people out there who have noticed your blog, you decide to write about blogging.

Over the past four years I've followed that track and have arrived to this place where blogging seems increasingly irrelevant to my life. So add this post to the list of posts I've written about the task of blogging (click on that link at risk of falling off into a boredom-induced stupor), and the various posts I've written about the end of my blogging career (including this one back in May, this one last December, and this one in April '08, among others). Oye.

Blogging for me was an outlet, a way for me to dabble in issues of church and pastoral ministry while I was on the outside looking in. But now that I'm on the inside of parish ministry – ordained and serving a congregation since December – I find that my desire to blog has plummeted. For me, blogging was a prelude, a preview, an appetizer.

Well, the main event, the feature presentation, the main course has arrived. What I used to do on the blog I now do via email and in person with parishoners, at conference meetings with fellow pastors, every other week in my ministry of preaching, and in the planning and preparations for the ministry areas for which I am responsible. That is, the theological and ministry dabbling that this blog allowed me do I now do elsewhere … in my call as pastor.

And though I love to write, I'm finding that I do plenty of writing in the course of my job, and don't need a blog to scratch that itch. I've been writing for my work within the congregation, and also some for Augsburg Fortress and the ELCA. It's been fun – a bit overwhelming at times, actually – but has also crowded out the blog.

Finally , I can see nothing but bad things to result if I were to blog about my parish. Broadcasting parish news on my personal blog, or referring to parish situations (even if I were to change some of the circumstances for the sake of the innocent) seems to be a violation of a pastoral trust that must exist between parish and pastor.

So, whatever … this post is now annoying me. Perhaps this is a love/hate thing, one of those "it's not you, it's me" kind of break-up things, or simply an overly narcissistic thing that needs to end here and now. Whatever it is, this might be the end of it.

3 Responses to As the Blog Fades …

Since you are listed on my Bloglines, it doesn’t matter how infrequently you blog, I’ll notice. My own blog has been getting more political. At Bible study today we talked about how issues of faith and issues of how we live out our faith bring our views of what the Bible says into the “political” realm, because that is faith in action. So currently, my issues are fair wages and the health care payment issues, about which I know way more than I wish. I sure hope I can convey on the blog that these are also faith issues for me.

Dang my comment disappeared. Just wanted to say that since you are on my Bloglines, I’ll know when you post, however infrequently. My blog has shifted to more “political” topics. But we were discussing at Bible Study today how faith issues are what we believe and what motivates us, but putting things into practice, into “works” [Yes, James] is, in essence, political. So I’ve been writing about health care payment issues, about which I have way too much knowledge.